ough the appendix to Mr. Ducey's volume," concludes the
reviewer, "we come across an interesting paragraph headed, 'A Curious
Survival.' It is a reprint of an obituary from the New York _Evening
Post_ of August, 1911, dealing with the minister of a small church far
up in the Bronx, who died at the age of eighty-one, after serving in the
same pulpit for fifty-three years. The _Evening Post_ notice states that
while the Rev. Mr. Smith was quite unknown below the Harlem, he had won
a certain prestige in his own neighbourhood through his old-fashioned
homilies, delivered twice every Sunday in the year, on love, charity,
pure living, clean thinking, early marriage, and the mutual duties of
parents towards their children and of children towards their parents.
'In the Rev. Mr. Smith,' remarks our author, 'we have a striking
vestigial specimen of an almost extinct type.'"

III

THE DOCTORS

The quarrels of the doctors do not concern me. I have worked out a
classification of my own which holds good for the entire profession. All
doctors, I believe, may be divided into those who go clean-shaven and
those who wear beards. The difference is more than one of appearance. It
is a difference of temperament and conduct. The smooth-faced physician
represents the buoyant, the romantic, what one might almost call the
impressionistic strain in the medical profession. The other is the
conservative, the classicist. My personal likings are all for the newer
type, but I do not mind admitting that if I were very ill indeed, I
should be tempted to send for the physician who wears a Vandyke and
smiles only at long intervals.

The reason is that when I am really ill I want some one who believes me.
That is something which the clean-shaven doctor seldom does. He is of
the breezy, modern school which maintains that nine patients out of ten
are only the victims of their own imagination. He greets you in a jolly,
brotherly fashion, takes your pulse, and says: "Oh, well, I guess you're
not going to die this trip," and he roars, as if it were the greatest
joke in the world to call up the picture of such dreadful possibilities.
When he prescribes, it is in a half-apologetic, half-quizzical manner,
and almost with a wink, as if he were to say, "This is a game, old man,
but I suppose it's as honest a way of earning one's living as most
ways." While he writes out his directions, he comments: "There is
nothing the matter with you, and you will tak